The Cramps’ lost Gravest Gravy finally crawls out of the crypt

The Cramps’ lost album Gravest Gravy has been set for release on 21 August via Vengeance, giving 28 May a major punk and underground-rock archival story. The collection features unreleased recordings from 1977 sessions produced by Big Star’s Alex Chilton, including material connected to the period that produced early Cramps singles such as Surfin’ Bird and Human Fly.

The project arrives with help from Poison Ivy, Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye, which makes the release feel like a handoff across underground generations. The Cramps were never simply a punk band, rockabilly band or goth band. They were a filthy, funny, theatrical portal into American trash culture, horror, sex, garage rock and outsider glamour.

A lost Cramps release matters because their mythology is built from precisely this kind of secret tape, half-lit stage and wrong-side-of-town electricity. For indie and alternative readers, Gravest Gravy is a reminder that archival releases can be more than museum work. Sometimes they restore danger to the present by proving the past was still wilder than we remembered. Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/the-cramps-lost-album-gravest-gravy-set-for-release/